Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

[selenak]

Hang on, with there are no anecdotes and no one dared to penetrate (ahem), then what is our author basing his certainty on that there were orgies once the last candle was snuffed out? (Also, in the orgies reported I've read of, like, say, the one Philippe the Regent and his daughter attended, I think everything was well lit.)

Still, yes, it's good to have at least one candidate for potential boyfriend. Who exactly was this knight of Roccavione?

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hang on, with there are no anecdotes and no one dared to penetrate (ahem)

I read it as him saying historians have been no-homoing Eugene and haven't dared to write down all the gayness, so they've portrayed him as asexual. Much like I'm pretty sure happened with Fritz, which is why I entered salon with a belief he had little or no sex drive. I'm now reasonable sure that a lot of no homo historiography went into this depiction.

But anyway, I think Pigaillem is saying there's plenty of *contemporary* evidence for Eugene's gayness that has been ignored in favor of a "all Mars, no Venus" attitude. And which he, Pigaillem, is now sharing with us. (Despite being a sexist ass with questionable chronology, he has his good points.)

Who exactly was this knight of Roccavione?

(lol at "knight of") If I'd been able to find anything, I would have told you! I googled him immediately, but I only got two hits, both from Eugene bios, and one said even less than what I told you here: just that Eugene sent him to Madrid as his representative when Olympe was trying to marry her son off.

The other is Braubach's bio of Eugene, which I don't know if I've mentioned it, but it's a mid-20th-century 5 volume magnum opus that gave Ragnhild Hatton biographer's envy. She say she wished she could believe anyone would read 5 volumes from her on Charles XII, but she didn't, so she was sticking with one volume. Braubach's been sitting in my Abebooks basket for about a year, but I've been holding off, since even if my German improves massively, $100 is a lot for something there's no way I'm reading 5 volumes of.

...

Oh, all right, I bought it. You twisted my arm. :P

I'm like an alcoholic with my book-buying. It's not about reading, it's about owning so I can do my detective work!

When it arrives, I will scan it and use the search function and see what I can tell you. I warn you that it's probably not a lot, though, judging from the snippets I got from Google.

The knight of Roccavione is like Count Martelli, my searches have been fruitless! (Yes, I do fantasize about learning handwriting *and* Italian and hunting through the Florentine archives, why do you ask? :P Realistically, by the time I have either of those skills, I won't care about Martelli any more.)

But I've been wanting to own the Braubach bio for my own purposes for a year now, so I'll be glad to have it even if we don't learn anything about Eugene's boyfriend. German practice, if nothing else.